This post was written by Nieves Knapp, a BYU Humanities Center faculty fellow.
In his most recent General Conference address, President Oaks spoke about the 30th anniversary of The Family Proclamation and encouraged family activities, including learning languages together [1]. His comments made me think about my own life because in 1995, precisely when the proclamation was first presented, we welcomed our first daughter to our family. At the time, we were living in Spain.
Our next two children were born in Provo, but in our home, we have always tried to be a bilingual and bicultural family. Our children’s names are common in both Spanish and English. They have excellent proficiency in each language and dual citizenship. Both our daughters graduated from BYU with bachelor’s degrees in Spanish Translation. Speaking multiple languages is useful and can be fun, but it can also prove very difficult, even humiliating (isn’t that right, RMs?).
A common misconception is that growing up bilingual is not only an advantage and a blessing (though many bilingual children don’t see it that way), but also SO easy because you don’t have to do anything other than grow up, becoming automatically fluent in two languages. However, for many members of multilingual households, being bilingual is difficult, messy, and conflictive. Being bicultural is just impossible.
What does it mean to be bilingual anyway? Guadalupe Valdés, an expert in Spanish-English bilingualism in the United States, explains that for many people, even scholars, the term bilingual can range from the ability to use two languages to some degree in everyday life to “the skilled superior use of both languages at the level of the educated native speaker.”[2] Some scholars call this educated-level speaker in two (or more!) languages the ‘mythical bilingual,” and claim that, like other mythical creatures, it just doesn’t exist.
Bilingualism isn’t all-or-nothing; it exists on a spectrum. People can have different levels of ability in multiple languages. Being bilingual also includes a wide range of language and life experiences, not just full fluency in the languages. Each person in a society has a different standard of what it means to be multilingual and multicultural, and it can feel impossible at times to measure up to what you “should” say, know, and do. For most multilinguals, speaking another language isn’t a choice. Moving to a new country, being raised in a bilingual family, or serving a foreign mission are all circumstances that simply occur and require language learning.
A “true bilingual” is someone who deals with diglossia in their daily interactions and who has a complex cultural system expressed in his or her personality and way of life. In linguistics, the term “diglossia” signifies that two dialects or languages are used by a single language community, but with fairly strict compartmentalization. In the case of heritage speakers, those that grow up with a family language that is not spoken by the majority of the surrounding community, for example, one language is spoken at home and at church, but another is the language of school and work. They are not used indistinctively or interchangeably; both languages have different functions and lend to different experiences. In such families, each child will have a different degree of language mastery and likely prefers to speak to siblings in his or her dominant language (the language of school and the community) and to parents in the heritage language. This common situation may arise because the parents are not as fluent in the school language or because it’s a family rule to speak the heritage language at home. Language-usage preferences can be situational or vary within social networks as well, such as speaking at the same school with some friends in the dominant language and others in the heritage one, or even code switching between the two with speakers that handle both. The language of choice will fill a different function, depending on the situation and social or even psychological contexts.
If we refer to patterns of thought and behavior (often defined by our culture), we realize that being bicultural is impossible because we can’t think or behave in different ways at the same time. This applies to everyday acts as personal space, table manners, eye contact, the way we greet people, and a million other aspects. As defined by Brooks, these factors comprise “a total way of life” [3].
Over generations, language maintenance is not sustained and usually, by the third or fourth generation, individuals assimilate and bilingualism is lost. During its founding period, Utah was linguistically diverse, though dominated mostly by English and Scandinavian languages. It is said that by 1880, one could hear a wide variety of English accents on the streets of Salt Lake City, and I am sure that many of you, readers of this blog, have immigrant pioneer ancestors from Norway, Denmark, or Sweden. Conversely, I am also sure that their language and many aspects of their culture have been lost to their descendants by now. Perhaps a cherished Christmas tradition or a well-loved family recipe has been passed down to the next generations, but language and culture have vanished and were dissolved into the dominant American way of life several generations ago.
For those of us first generation or heritage speakers who are trying to be the “real bilinguals” that we are, living with multiple languages every day is hard work. As the saying goes, “if you don’t use it, you lose it.” It’s very difficult to try to maintain and balance several languages and various cultural patterns of behavior. We tend to experience an “impostor syndrome” many times when we are speaking in a non-dominant language and experiencing the culture that is farther from what is more comfortable for us. It can happen teaching a class in our second or third language, trying to translate a culturally rich expression, or even writing this blog. We want to say, like a character in a popular TV show, “Do you even know how smart I am in Spanish?” (or whatever our dominant language is). Some people would ask: can’t you just write it in your first or dominant language and just translate it (or use a machine translator or AI)? It is never the same. The meaning and feel can be, as the saying goes, “lost in translation.”
On top of that, the worst feeling is when we go back to the native land, and things are not how they are supposed to be. The culture has changed from what we remember, but the truth is that we have also changed; we are out of sync with that original culture. This even occurs when away for short periods of time, causing a reverse culture shock when returning to what has been the norm.
In sum, it is really complicated to be bilingual, but is it worth it? Of course! Learning about different cultures, languages, and ways to see our common world helps us become more compassionate and understanding as a global society. Rather than viewing customs and accents as strange or inferior, we can appreciate the variety and richness that they denote. What is considered “normal” is a reflection of the cultural and linguistic majority, so the “normal” to one person is often considered “weird” to another. We learn more about our own culture when we appreciate these differences instead of closing ourselves off. After all, our normal becomes strange as soon as we are in another environment. There is no “correct” way to be a multilingual and multicultural person; each situation is unique. But any amount of language and cultural learning, regardless of level or perceived perfection, enriches our lives and expands our horizons as we connect with others and with ourselves.
We have been instructed to “learn, and become acquainted with all good books, and with languages, tongues, and people” (Doctrine and Covenants 90:15). Heritage languages and diversity are considered a great “national resource” as they provide the ability to better experience humanity and the Humanities, to better understand others, and better understand ourselves. After all, part of Jesus Christ’s experiences on earth included being multilingual. To echo the sentiment expressed by President Oaks, learning languages together as families can make us more human, more understanding of others and, as the hymn suggests, “more, Savior, like Thee.”
References
[1] Oaks, D. H. (2025, October) The Family-Centered Gospel of Jesus Christ, General Conference https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/2025/10/58oaks?lang=eng
[2] Valdés, G. (2001). “Heritage language students: Profiles and possibilities.” In Peyton, J. K., Ranard, D. A. & McGinnis, S. (Ed.), Heritage languages in America: Preserving a national resource. (pp. 37-77). McHenry, IL: Delta Systems.
[3] Brooks, N. (1968). Teaching Culture in the Foreign Language Classroom. Foreign Language Annals, 1,3, 204-17
